Great Apes by Will Self Page B

be insideyou now.” He gestured at the hanks of him ‘n’ her that linked them.
    â€œSimon?” She was glancing around, as if trying to search him out among the trees. She was looking everywhere but at the small clearing, with its fitted sheet, where he lay. “Simon? Simo …?”
    Her voice trailed off. She bent forward on the branch and plucked at something. Simon felt a twinge. It was him! She was plucking at him! Sarah brought the plait of vesicles up to her mouth. She held it in her hand as casually as if it had been a rope and she some arboreal campanologist. And then without preamble, she began to gnaw at it.
    Simon felt her small, sharp teeth bite into him. “Sarah!” he cried. “Don’t… Sarah, that’s me!” But she didn’t seem to hear him, she kept on gnawing, occasionally breaking off to pick a bit of their gristle from between her teeth. The thing that linked them – was it umbilicus or penis? He could not say – was now almost cut through, and still she gnawed, and still he shouted out, “Sarah! Stop it! Sarah – you’ll lose me, we’re in a forest!” But she paid no heed, just kept gnawing. Now only a single string of pink remained, glistening in her incisors. She bit down – and severed him altogether.
    I want to wake up, Simon thought. Wake up! he commanded his body, which lay coldly athwart his volition, a grave weight. Wake up! He struggled to shift it, some tiny part of it, any movement at all would be enough to release him from the dream, but he could engineer nothing. Nothing. He strained, and thought: I am here, I am lying in this nest with … Sarah. Sarah, he could feel the warmth of her above or below him. He swam up towhere he could … feel it beneath his cheek. The warmth of her small breast with its fine covering of coarse blonde fur.
    Simon Dykes, the artist, awoke, his consort’s breast cushioning his cheek. He sighed, and nuzzled his muzzle down into the sweet animality of her.

Chapter Six
    It was a beautiful, late-summer morning. Redington Road was lined with trees at their final, fructive stage. The smells of yeast and verdancy filled the air. Busner surveyed the solid red-brick villas flanking the road. Despite the mounting heat, the early mating had left him feeling zestful and before heading off down the garden path, he took a lip-funnelling breath then let out a great pant-hoot, full of
joie de vivre.
This was answered by a chorus of pant-hoots from his neighbours, some of whom he now noticed were crouched in the surrounding branches.
    â€œH’hooo!” they pant-hooted, then waved, ‘Morning, Busner.’
    â€œH’hooo!” he revocalised, cheerily saluting them with a wave of his briefcase. This initial exchange of greetings was echoed by chimps in the adjoining streets, who pant-hooted their welcomes to the suburb, and then echoed by still more chimps at a greater remove, and still more chimps at a still greater remove, their calls dying away in the direction of Belsize Park.
    Gambol had got the car, a maroon Seven Series Volvo Estate, out of the garage and it now stood idling by the front gate. Busner could see three of his sub-adult males in the back seat. They were so entwined in mutual groomingthat he couldn’t establish which, but he was pleased to note that Erskine and Charles were there; neither of them had been doing enough patrolling recently as far as their alpha was concerned.
    Busner threw his briefcase in the boot and got in on the passenger side. ‘Now then, Gambol,’ he signed as the subordinate chimp powered the car away from the kerb, his hands flying as he changed up through the first eight gears. ‘ “Euch-euch” what on earth is it that’s so important that it couldn’t have waited for me to finish my second breakfast, “huu”?’
    â€˜I had a call from Jane Bowen at Charing Cross emergency psychiatric